Apennine Mountains Image

I thought I'd share an image I took on 29th December 2014 of the Apennine Mountains region of the lunar surface.

I'm really new to astrophotography, so I'm really pleased with this image even though it's blurry.

The Apennines are a region to the east of Mare Imbrium, and they are a massive 4600m high above the Mare surface.  The Apollo 15 astronauts returns samples which show that the surface here is mostly a breccia, whereas the Mare region is basalt.

It's a stacked image from an AVI video of about 30 seconds that I took using an adapted webcam in my telescope.  I ran it through registax, which is free software imaging program you can download from here. Basically, it takes the video, and stacks the images to a final image.  It's a really good program, I'm still getting the hang of it though!

Three Planets In One Viewing Session!

Earlier this month, I managed to view 3 planets in one viewing session, which I've never managed before.  Venus and Jupiter are riding high in the west which is the perfect position for me, and Saturn is just coming into my available view now, in the South.  Venus was in a half phase, I think.  The seeing conditions weren't the most favourable, it was mostly pretty hazy with intermittent moments of sharpness, but I could still make out Jupiter's bands and two of the Galilean moons, Europa and Ganymede.

I was most delighted with my first view of the year of Saturn though, it's so breathtaking to see it in the telescope eyepiece!  I'm fairly sure I could also see two small faint moons too which really pleased me.

This week is a great time to see the moon near Venus and Jupiter at dusk, it will be a great opportunity for me to carry on with my lunar 100 list!

Betelgeuse - Orion's Red Shoulder

I love the constellation of Orion, it was the first constellation I learned to recognise in the night sky.  I've been ill for a few weeks so I've not been able to get out with the telescope, so I've been doing some reading about Betelgeuse, Orion's red shoulder.

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, and it's the 10th brightest star in the sky. It's colour is actually visible to the naked eye - next time you look, try comparing the colours between Betelgeuse and Rigel on Orion's knee. It's actually an unstable star, and it fluctuates between 300 and 400 times the size of the sun, and so it's apparent magnitude changes from 0.4 to 1.2.

It's cooler than our Sun, scientists think the temperature is 3300 degrees Kelvin whereas our Sun is 5778 degrees Kelvin.  It's actually 1000 times more massive though, and its size is huge - if it was placed in our Solar System, it would reach out almost to Jupiter's orbit.  Wow! Lucky it's 640 light years away, huh?

Scientists say that though the star is young, it has probably already fused it's Hydrogen and has begun to fuse Helium.  It will eventually work through its other elements - neon, magnesium, sodium and silicon down to its iron core before it collapses into a type II supernova.  That will definately be a sight to see! 

Finally, it's the only star other than our own that NASA has got a surface image of, the first was in 1995, by Hubble:







image credit NASA, for more info on the image, click here

Hubble revisits the Pillars of Creation

 

Isn't this an incredible image? The Hubble team at NASA and the ESA have revisited this iconic image to mark Hubble's 25th anniversary in orbit.  It's actually part of the Eagle Nebula, or M16.  The image was taken using Oiii and H-alpha filters to allow light wavelengths of different colours to be seen.  I'm a massive fan of the work that Hubble has done over the last 25 years, and I'm looking forward to seeing it's new images in 2015! 

image credit NASA and ESA/Hubble

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Observation Report from 29th December 2014

I was lucky this evening to have some really sharp viewing conditions, so I set up even though it was freezing out! (It stayed around zero degrees over my whole observing period.  Brrr!)

First up, the Moon was in a great position for me to get some short video to process and stack later.  I'll share the result on here when I'm finished :)

After the moon slid out of my view, I looked around the Hyades in Taurus using my 25mm eyepiece for the largest FOV I could manage. The Hyades are so beautiful, I love looking at them! After that, I had a go at splitting Alnitak which is one of my January quests, but had no luck. (you can read my other January targets here )  I did manage to split Mintaka though with a 4mm eyepiece which gives me 250x magnification.  It was a lovely sight, the larger primary star and smaller, fainter blue companion stood out really nicely.

I was coming to the end of the time I had allowed, so I thought I'd have a tinker with the alignment and the GoTo on the mount.  I haven't really ever used these elements as I wanted to learn my way around the night sky.  After I'd aligned it, i set it to look for Uranus, and was delighted to see it shining green in the eyepiece!  It wasn't as visually impressive as Saturn or Jupiter, and it remained a small disc even at 250x magnification, but I was really pleased to finally see it!

All in all, I was pretty pleased with my unplanned short session!

Perihelion!

So, this morning at 0636 UT the Earth was at its closest point to the Sun for this year. That seems a bit weird, as my garden thermometer says it's only 3 degrees centigrade outside! This is because at its closest the Earth is still 147,096,204 km away, and at its furthest point is only roughly 5 million km farther out - not much of a difference in the astronomical scheme of things! Earth's season's aren't therefore caused by it's distance from the Sun, but by the tilt of the Earth. And currently the Northern hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun and is in winter. Great for long nights and dark skies for observing!

January 2015 Viewing Aims

To give my stargazing some kind of direction, I've set myself some targets for January:

Very early in January comes the Quadrantid meteor shower, also known as the Bootid shower.  It's name comes from the now declassified constellation of Quandrans Muralis and the shower material is associated with asteroid 2003 EH1 or maybe the comet c/1490 y1 - there is some debate over this.  It has a small peak window on the night of the 4th January, but a well lit waxing gibbous Moon may well wash the shower out.  Meteors may also be seen between the 1st and 5th of January, but in smaller numbers.

I've got a bit of a thing about double stars at the moment, having managed to split spectacular Albireo earlier this winter.  This month, Ill be trying to split Alnitak and Mintaka in Orion.  Alnitak is the farthest East of the belt stars, Mintaka the western most.  Alnitak might be tough to split it in my particular telescope, but I like a challenge, and Orion is now in a favourable viewing position for me.

A short hop from Orion is the constellation of Monoceros, I've read about beta Monocerotis and it sounds like it will be a nice treble to try and split and see.

On the 11th January, Mercury and Venus will be close together low in the South West.  Ive never seen Mercury so I've really got my hopes up about this.  I've a sneaking feeling though that they will be too low on the horizon for me - my South West view is partially blocked by trees.

Jupiter is now in a position where I can see it from about 2230, so Ill be looking forward to my first views of the season.  It's one of my favourite sights, and I'm hoping to attempt some images this year.

Early January should give me some opportunities to continue my Lunar 100 challenge.  I'd like to try to image each one, but my main aim for January- lunar wise at least - is to image the Appenines!

Finally, comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy is on it's way so I'll be trying to catch a little glimpse of it.  There is a wealth of information on the comet here.

I hope this may have inspired you to look at some of these, let me know how you get on, and your own aims via the comment option below. Here's hoping for clear skies!